


Clipped wings, I was a broken thing

by ShariDeschain



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Temporary Blindness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 17:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17853605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShariDeschain/pseuds/ShariDeschain
Summary: It's a bad way to die: cowered in a corner, wet and cold and scared.





	Clipped wings, I was a broken thing

He comes awake to the sound of gunfire.

He opens his eyes and can’t see anything but a white haze, and grey figures dancing inside it. All he can feel is the rain pounding down on his face and the taste of mud between the teeth. 

_The explosion_ , he thinks. _The explosion has blinded me._

He doesn't know why he's thinking about an explosion. He doesn't remember there was one, he doesn’t remember anything at all. It’s just this feeling, like he’s warm and cold at the same time, that makes him think of freezing rain on burnt skin. Oh, and it smells like a fire. Something chemical. Something bad.

Jason rolls on his back, trying to focus.

The rain starts falling down directly into his eyes now, not improving his already impaired vision by any means. But it’s weird, isn’t it? Rain should not be able to get to his face. He should have a helmet over his head. 

Where is his helmet?

His head snaps to the side when he hears the click of a familiar trigger and the very specific sound of a gun dry firing, and everything in him freezes because it’s not just any gun, it’s a Jericho 941, and it’s not even any Jericho 941, it’s _his_ Jericho 941.

So he doesn’t have his helmet, and he doesn’t have his guns, and the worst thing is that he’s pretty sure those are not the only things he’s missing, or even the most important ones. There’s something urgent scratching at the back of his mind, something that is setting off all of his mental alarms, crying out to him to get back on his feet and… what? Kill everyone? No. Protect something. Protect someone.

He rubs the back of his hands against his eyes, hoping that it will somehow help him regain his sight, then he blinks and tries again to put his surroundings to focus, but the white mist still lingers onto everything, turning the world into a wet, milky nightmare.

Jason tries not to panic and to reason instead: there are gunshots all around him, but if he were an easy target he’d already be drilled with bullets (a familiar feeling, and one he’d recognize easily, even half off his senses), so he must be at least partially sheltered behind something.

He drags himself through the mud anyway, scrambling to at least pull himself up on his knees, and he feels the dirt sticking to his face in layers of dust and blood that not even the pouring rain will wash away. It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter because one of those grey figures has just clicked his tongue at the others and, god damn it, Jason would recognize that sound everywhere, just as he would recognize everywhere the empty clicking of his own guns.

“Hey! Hey, brat!”, he calls out. He doesn’t call him Damian or Robin because he’s not sure if this is a vigilante thing or not. It should be, given that there are guns involved, but on the other hand this is Gotham, so it wouldn’t be very smart to just assume. 

Beside, the dry firing he heard was very close, and that means there’s a good chance Damian’s the one actually using his guns. Which is something they already discussed about - several times - and Jason remembers providing extremely accurate details of what he would do to the kid if the catched him doing it again.

“BRAT!”, he downrights roars, slamming a fist into the ground for good measure.

He doesn’t remember what happened before to make him end up lying sore, scorched and half blinded on the ground, and he doesn’t understand what’s happening now, who’s shooting at them and why Damian’s firing his guns, but what he does know is that he doesn’t like this one bit, and if there’s someone who needs to do some explaining _right now_ , that is, without a shadow of a doubt, his youngest brother.

“Shut up, Hood!”, Damian yells back, and by the sound of it he’s not very far off from him, maybe just a few feet.

Jason growls in response, but Damian calling him Hood at least confirms that they’re in the middle of a patrol gone wrong. He only wishes he would remember what happened, where the hell are they, and why it looks like there’s just the two of them against - at the very least - four other gunmen.

“Robin, get your skinny ass right here!”, he shouts again, feeling along the ground around him. He finds a wall on his right side, and uses it as a prop to pull himself up to stand on one knee, and the effort to do that simple thing leaves him almost breathless.

Jason probes his chest with one hand, looking for open wounds or cracked ribs, but the armor feels undamaged, if only a bit too warm and smooth to the touch. He doesn’t understand.

“I need more ammunition”, Robin returns at the top of his lungs, trying to overcome both the sound of the storm and the gunshots that keep coming down on them. Jason doesn't even know if the little snot has found shelter or if he's simply standing there, doing his best impression of a moving target.

“You need to come here. Right now!”, Jason roars in his best you-better-not-fuck-with-me voice, and he’s sure any other thirteen years old would piss their pants at being yelled at like this by the Red Hood himself, but Damian is Damian, so he does what he can to stand on his feet, ignoring the pain and his lack of breath, and he walks towards him, full intentioned on dragging him somewhere safe, even if he doesn’t know where that is yet.

Rationally, he knows he’s overreacting. Damian may be an infuriating brat, but he’s not stupid and he’s not as impulsive as he used to be. He probably knows what he’s doing. The problem is that Jason doesn’t feel very rational now. He feels scared. And angry.

There’s another clicking sound, this time addressed to him, then the metallic hiss of a sword drawn out of its scabbard. 

“Robin?”, Jason calls out again, but the little grey figure in front of him is still too blurry to make sense.

“Get back on the ground!”, the kid yells again.

“Like hell I will!”

There’s a weird, vibrating sound of steel against steel, and something small and potentially lethal flies just above Jason’s head.

“Are you trying to catch the bullets with your sword?”, Jason cries out incredulously. “What the hell, kid, I knew we shouldn’t let you watch cartoons.”

Damian mumbles something that would definitely make Alfred threaten to wash his mouth with soap, but before Jason has the time to make a smart remark about it, Damian runs towards him in a symphony of splashing footsteps and pushes him back to the ground without any gentleness whatsoever.

“Stay down!”, the kid has the nerve to holler at him, and it takes Jason more than a few moments to pierce all the informations together, but in the end his mind provides the final verdict on the situation.

Damian has only his sword in his hands, and he’s standing in front of him trying to shield him from their enemies, and Jason wants to laugh because Damian’s so little, how on earth could he think Jason would be able to hide behind him? And at the same time he’s so angry because Damian’s so little, how on earth could he think Jason would ever _allow_ it? He tries to find him amidst the shadows, then points a useless finger at him in his best imitation of an angry Bruce.

“Damian!”, he hisses, ashamed of not being able to stand up right back after being shoved down by a toddler. “I swear to god I’ll sell you to the circus if you don’t come here right now.”

There’s another of those annoyed clicking sounds, then the hustle of light steps getting closer to him.

“There are too many”, Damian admits, and Jason does his best in trying not to register the lingering panic into the thickness of the kid’s voice. 

“No duh, Sherlock”, he comments, reaching out a hand to steady himself as he crouches down. He still can’t see Damian, if not as a vaguely grayer shape, but that’s not an information he’s going to offer willingly, not if the kid is already scared. Still, he has to ask: “I’m still not totally awake but overall fine, thank you for asking. Are we covered?”

Damian grabs his arm and pushes him a little to the side.

“Just barely”, he answers tightly, not picking up on the snark. “There is a pile of crates here, and this alley is a dead-end. They know we're out of bullets, but they’re going to wait before before coming in anyway, in case we have other firearms.”

Jason hears the boy hesitate, inhaling slowly between clenched teeth.

“Do we?”, Damian asks eventually, and the tinge of hope in his voice makes Jason’s heart hurt, because that’s the kind of inflection normal kids use to ask for an ice cream or a new toy, not weapons to protect themselves and their older brothers.

“We do not”, Jason answers straight away, but since he’s not a cruel man he quickly adds: “ _I_ do. So come closer and tell me what the hell is happening while we still have time to chat.”

He feels Damian’s body pressing against his, and waves of relief engulfs him as he slings an arm around the kid’s shoulder to keep him close. Up to now, and since he wasn’t able to see him, as far as Jason knew, Damian could’ve a ghost, an illusion of his mind, so it's nice to have a physical proof that he is, in fact, real. 

Damian struggles a bit under his touch but doesn’t try to shake him off, instead Jason feels him tilting his head to the side to look up at him.

“Can you see me?”, he asks bluntly, and Jason feels himself growing very still under the boy’s scrutiny. He’s been very careful to keep his face turned to the side so that he wouldn't have to meet the boy's gaze, but of course the brat would notice anyway.

“Why do you ask?”

There’s something uneasy about the way Damian pauses at his question and Jason wishes he could see something more of him than a grey silhouette, he wishes he could try to read his face to know how bad this is. Then again, if he could do that, there probably would be no reason for Damian to sound so uncharacteristically worried.

Jason flinches as little gloved fingers poke at his cheekbone, more because of the unusual kindness with which they touch him, than because of the unexpected contact.

“Damian?”, Jason swallows before asking again, resisting the urge to turn around and look at his brother’s face. It would be stupid and useless. “Why do you think I can’t see you?”

“Because of the acid”, Damian answers carefully.

The words make Jason’s skin crawl.

“The acid”, he repeats.

Glimpses of sharp images flash before his eyes: an abandoned underground garage, red barrels leaking on the floor, a burst of fire, Robin’s warning yell, then the ceiling crashing over their heads.

He knows he tried to protect the kid from the wrecks by shielding him with his body, but then one of the barrels had blown up, sending them flying against a wall. He remembers a spray of black fluid hitting him in the face, melting the lenses and the circuits of his helmet and then nothing else. Damian must have dragged him out of the collapsing building just in time, and with no little effort, apparently.

Damian's fingers keep rubbing at his face with great care, and Jason would like to be able to open his mouth to tell the kid he's not hurting him, so there's no need to be so damn careful, but he can’t force himself to speak. He doesn't know if not feeling any pain is a good thing or not.

“Is it bad?”, he manages to ask in the end. “Am I going to give Two Face a run for his money as the hottest chemical-burned guy in Gotham?”

He can tell from the swirl of the air, and the resulting spray of raindrops flying out of his wet hair, that Damian is shaking his head, then the boy seems to notice what he's doing. Jason doesn't have any visual evidence to support his hypothesis, but he's pretty sure that Damian is blushing as he speaks up.

“It… doesn’t look so”, he says, trying and failing to sound unimpressed. “It melted your stupid helmet and your hair is even worse than before, but your face looks okay. No uglier than usual.”

Jason brings a hand to his hair and indeed, he only finds sharp, scorched tips. But his face doesn’t feel weird under his fingers and there are no new scars on his skin. He tastes around his eyes just to be sure, but they also feel fine, even if he can still see only the shadow of his own hand.

“Damn”, he curses, but he’s actually comforted by the discovery. Hair grows back. Eyeballs don’t. “What about my eyes? I can’t feel anything different about them.”

Damian moves so close to him Jason can feel the boy’s shaky breath on his face, then he points a flashlight into his face. The fact that he can perceive the light into his eyes is another reassuring sign.

“Your eyes are fine”, Damian confirms after a moment. “I think you only have a head trauma.”

“Oh thank god then”, Jason snaps, but it’s good to know that his eyeballs were not, in fact, turned into a useless goo. He keeps an ear out for any incoming enemies, but it looks like they are still gathering the courage for their final attack.

“How many?”, he asks.

“Five men, three other already down.”

“My guns?”

There’s just one moment of guilty hesitation, and Jason knows the answers even before the boy opens his mouth to answer.

“They were empty, I threw them at their faces.”

“You threw- we’re going to have a talk about that, kid. A very unpleasant talk.”

Damian doesn’t even answer to the threat, which it say something. So Jason asks his final question.

“Are you hurt?”

There’s another jittery breath. Jason feels it against his neck, hot and broken and exhausted. Again, he already has his answer.

“No”, Damian denies anyway, because of course he would.

“Too quick, buddy”, Jason informs him, trying to move the kid closer to him. This time Damian does swat his hands away.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does”, Jason argues, turning towards him and trying to guess where his eyes are in that mess of grey shapes. “Look, I have a grenade we can use to get out of here, but I need to know if you can run.”

Damian gives him a contemptuous sniff and readjusts himself against Jason’s side.

“Of course I can run”, he retorts. “Can you, Hood?”

Jason thinks about it. Even taking the half-blindness issue out of the way, he’s still shaken up by the explosion, and his legs don’t feel really trustworthy right now. He could barely stand on his own feet so, realistically, running is not an option for him. But it is for Damian, and that’s enough.

“Listen, brat-”, he starts, but Robin is, as always, too smart for his own good. And too quick for Jason’s momentarily impaired body. 

Damian seems to already know where to look for what he needs, and Jason has barely the time to register the touch of the kid’s hands along the hidden pockets inside his jacket before he feels the grenade being removed from its holster.

“Damian, don’t-”, he tries to yell, reaching out to grab the kid and block him, but all he can grab is the hilt of his sword. He tries to use it to pull him back, but the little bastard can be a slippery mouse when he wants to, and Jason feels him slipping away from his hold with an ease that put him to shame again. He should be able to control a freaking pre-teen, shouldn’t he?

“Damn you!”, he swears, scrambling on all fours in the vain attempt to snatch him back, losing the sword in the process. “I’ll kill you, you son of a Bruce-”

There’s some rustling as the gunmen scatters away from the bomb, then one lonely gunshot, and for a moment Jason stops breathing, waiting to see the little grey shadow collapsing on the ground. Instead Damian just spins on his feet and runs back to him.

“Let’s go”, the boy says, wrapping an arm around Jason’s middle and pushing him forwards.

“You little fucker, what the hell were you think-”

“Move your fat ass!”, the boy grunts from under his arm, and Jason is really, really tempted to just squeeze his neck and suffocate him in retaliation, but Damian pushes him with such violence that Jason is forced to cling to the boy to avoid falling forward and faceplanting into the concrete. He swears again, stumbling into his feet, but Robin is strong enough to support at least half of his weight, so he gives in and leans against his brother, forcing himself to follow into his quick steps.

“If this were the other way around, I'd leave your ass in the dust”, Jason snarls anyway, because it would be too dangerous to actually slap the kid with his free hand.

“Liar”, Damian bites through his teeth.

They have to stop when they reach the entrance of the alley. This is the most dangerous moment because, even if the heavy rain hides them a bit from the view, they are still very exposed to the enemy fire. Jason has kept track of the seconds and there's now a handful left before the grenade explodes, so the question now is if their enemies are tenacious enough to take advantage of that.

There's also the fact that Jason’s life lies, quite literally, into Damian's hands, but that worries him a little less, strangely enough.

“I’m not lying”, Jason returns with an almost cheerful tone, as he feels Damian peering around the corner. “Why would I lie? You’re nothing to me. Just a thieving little brat.”

Damian pokes him into his ribs, the little shit, then squeezes tightly the arm Jason has wrapped around his shoulders.

“Shut up. Two seconds, jump to your right and roll”, Damian orders him, and Jason can’t do anything else but obey. 

They wait two seconds, then jump and roll, but the heat of the explosion catches them anyway, sending them meeting the ground with a lot more brutality than expected. Jason takes a double blow as he lands on his back while Damian comes crashing shortly after into his chest. Clouds of dust surround them, making them cough angrily against each other.

“Fuck”, Jason exhales once he can catch his breath again, waiting to get rid of the white buzz now ringing through his ears and directly into his brain. “This is the third explosion of the night. That’s two too many, if you ask me.”

There’s no hostile comment, no exasperated snort or annoyed click of the tongue, and Jason blinks faster, looking around between the shadows.

“Damian?”

The kid is still there, he can feel him leaning against his shoulder, but except for the coughing he’s grown worryingly silent, and the hand pressing against Jason is now curled into a tight fist.

“Robin? What’s wrong?”

Forced by habit, Jason tries to crane his head back and look around to find out what’s troubling the kid, squinting like that would help anything.

“It’s another dead-end”, Damian whispers under his breath.

“What?”

“They blocked the road, we can’t leave.”

_And we can’t fight_ , is what Damian doesn’t tell. There’s no need to, because neither one of them is stupid enough not to notice. 

Jason pushes himself up on his hands, steadying Damian against himself. He touches the kid’s face and feels hot sweat on cold skin, and something too viscous to be anything else but blood. He presses his thumb against Damian’s lips and finds them twitching with every broken breath he takes. As much as Jason doesn’t like to admit it, there’s no way the kid doesn’t have a punctured lung, on top of what else, only god knows.

It’s still pretty clear to him that Damian’s exhausted, and barely keeping himself together at this point.

“Your grappling hook?”, Jason asks, trying to assess the situation again.

Damian shakes his head again. Again, it takes the kid a moment to remember that Jason can’t see him.

“I used it to get out of the garage and forgot to retrieve it”, he offers then, and he sounds tired, and young, and very close to tears. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s no damn reason for you to be sorry about it, there were people shooting at us”, Jason snaps. “Is your comm still working?”

Another shake of the head.

“Fried by the explosion.”

Jason was expecting that. Still, it sucked to hear it outloud.

“I sent my position before we went underground”, Damian adds, with a bit more confidence. “Father is coming for us.”

_You just don’t know if he’ll be here in time_ , Jason thinks. It’s more than worrisome that Damian's natural and sometimes vicious bluntness is falling apart in front of him, turning into a silent, atypical denial. It makes Damian looks too much like the kid he is, and Jason hates that.

“Of course he is”, he offers back, biting down the sarcasm. Normally he wouldn’t pass on the occasion to roast Bruce for his failures, but Damian’s discovered first hand what happens when Batman is not Batman enough, and Jason’s not going to remind the kid that his father's record of situations like this one is not always good - at least when it concerns the two of them. 

“We need to take cover. They’ll come as soon as the smoke clears out”, he continues in his most neutral voice. He’s thinking fast and hard, but there’s no way he’s going to show one ounce of panic in front of this kid. “Let’s go.”

Jason nudges gently at Damian’s shoulder and helps him get back up again, then accepts the hand offered to him in order to do the same. They stagger together under the rain and along the unpaved street, and he lets Damian be his eyes again, lets the kid find a new safe spot for them. Hide and seek is not a good game in the vigilante business, especially if you’re the one who needs to hide, but they’ll have to adapt.

“Here”, Damian says after a while, when the sound of heavy footsteps behind them becomes too close to be ignored any longer.

Jason feels around with his hands to find a disrupted brick wall, and beyond it a cavity large enough for the two of them to hide behind. It’s not ideal - bricks don't stop bullets, and they tend to crumble too fast under gunfire - but if Damian chose this place, it means there's nothing better.

It's still a bad way to die: cowered in a corner, wet and cold and scared. Jason’s not going to say it outloud, but he can’t keep the bitter thought out of his head, as he and Damian climb over the lowest row of bricks to let themselves fall on the other side.

But it’s been what, half an hour since this shit went sideways? Batman should have been here twenty five minutes ago. They work on their reacting time so hard, then things like this happen and there’s no one around. Sometimes Jason thinks the Joker is right about just one thing: life is one big, twisted joke.

There's a flash of lightning, then the rumble of a thunder so loud that it seems to be splitting the world in two. The rain keeps pouring down on them in waterfalls of icy drops, and Damian’s hand slips on the wet clay. Jason catches him just in time and hoists him up with a grunt. His head hurts, as well as his back and legs, and his vision is even worse now. Everything is black and unfocused, and it feels like when you wake up in the middle of the night in a strange place you’ve never seen before.

“It’s okay”, he whispers into the shell of Damian’s ear. “It’s alright.”

It isn’t and Robin knows it, smartass as he’s always been.

Jason pulls out his last gun, the one he keeps tucked away on the back of his shoulder holster. It’s difficult to reach it and it only holds five bullets in it, and that’s what makes it the last weapon he relies on in a fight. Generally speaking, if he needs to use it, it’s usually a bad sign.

He pulls back the hammer of the gun, and finds himself a hole to shoot from. He’s good at shooting in the dark. In optimal condition a blindfold over his eyes wouldn’t slow him down one bit, and he could shoot down five people with five bullet easily enough, but right now he knows all bets are off. Doesn’t mean he’s not going to take a chance anyway.

He knows Damian’s looking at him, so he gestures for the kid to come closer to him. He can’t offer much protection right now, but he’s still going to try.

“No. You stay here”, Damian says. “I will cover the entrance and-”

“No way.”

He grabs Robin’s wrist and tugs the boy towards him, expecting a struggle that doesn't come. Damian leans into him with a contempted huff, but he doesn’t protest, doesn’t insist on fighting, and Jason has to wonder if, despite the big words, Damian’s already realized that they are going to die here.

He sucks the air between his teeth and lets out a sharp breathe that tastes of blood and ashes.

It doesn’t matter.

Jason lowers the kid down onto his lap, hooking an arm around his waist and pulling closer until Damian’s seated between his crossed legs, the kid’s back resting against his chest.

“I need you to help me with the gun”, he explains, before Damian starts complaining about the undignified position.

It’s not true, and he suspects Damian knows that as well. But the boy still extends his hand, and Jason lets him grab the handle into his palm, curling his own fingers around Damian’s, steadying their grip as much as he can. Together they train the gun in front of them as they hear the footsteps approaching.

“Let’s take out a few kneecaps, mh?”, Jason says, faking a self-confidence he doesn’t have anymore. “Nothing lethal, or when your old man comes he’s gonna be very disappointed in me for giving you a bad example.”

“Father _is_ coming for us”, Damian insists, stubborn as ever, and Jason leans down to kiss the top of his head before letting his shoulders fall back against the wall in the most comfortable position he can find. This time there will be no point in trying to push himself in front of his brother. It would only buy the kid a few seconds, and they would be seconds of pure terror.

“Of course he is”, he promises. 

Then he closes his eyes and waits.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Is there going to be a second chapter? Who knows. I don't, that's for sure.
> 
>  
> 
> Written for the COWT @ landedifandom, prompt 'rain'


End file.
